Jeremiah 16

The word of the LORD came to me: “Do not take a wife or have sons and daughters in this place.” For this is what the LORD says concerning the sons and daughters born in this place, the mothers who bear them, and the fathers who bring them into the world in this land: “They will die of deadly diseases. They will not be mourned or buried; they will be like dung on the surface of the ground. They will perish by sword and famine, and their corpses will be food for the birds of the heavens and the animals of the earth.” For this is what the LORD says: “Do not enter a house of mourning; do not go to lament or console them, for I have withdrawn my peace from this people, declares the LORD, my steadfast love and my compassion. Great and small will die in this land. They will not be buried or mourned; no one will cut himself or shave his head for them. No one will break bread to comfort those mourning the dead, nor give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or mother. Do not enter a house of feasting to sit with them to eat and drink. For this is what the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, says: Look, before your eyes and in your days I will put an end in this place to the sound of joy and the sound of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. When you tell this people all these words, they will ask you, ‘Why has the LORD pronounced all this great disaster against us? What is our iniquity, and what is the sin we have committed against the LORD our God?’ Tell them: ‘Because your ancestors forsook me, declares the LORD, and followed other gods, served them, and bowed down to them. They forsook me and did not keep my law. And you have done worse than your ancestors. Look, each of you follows the stubbornness of his evil heart, refusing to listen to me. So I will hurl you out of this land into a land neither you nor your ancestors have known. There you will serve other gods day and night, where I will show you no favor.’ Therefore look, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when it will no longer be said, ‘As the LORD lives, who brought the people of Israel up from the land of Egypt,’ but, ‘As the LORD lives, who brought the people of Israel up from the land of the north and from all the lands where he had driven them.’ I will bring them back to their land, which I gave their ancestors. Look, I am sending for many fishermen, declares the LORD, and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them from every mountain, every hill, and the crevices of the rocks. For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes. First I will repay them double for their iniquity and their sin, because they have defiled my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols and filled my inheritance with their abominations.” LORD, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of distress, to you the nations will come from the ends of the earth and say, “Our ancestors inherited only lies, worthless things with no benefit in them.” Can a person make gods for himself?
They are no gods! “Therefore look, I will make them know;
this time I will make them know my hand and my might, and they will know that my name is the LORD.”

Rights and attribution